Iowa sifting through more than 40,000 Rose Bowl ticket requests

Iowa football is the hottest ticket in the country for college bowl season. Secondary-market prices for the Rose Bowl Game vs. Stanford are at $600-plus on the cheap end.(Photo: Reese Strickland, USA TODAY Sports)

If you're not a Hawkeye football season ticket holder, you're probably out of luck for getting any of the 22,000 Rose Bowl tickets allotted through the University of Iowa.

And even if you are, there are no guarantees.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the UI Athletics Ticket Office had received nearly 43,000 ticket requests. The deadline to apply through the UI for Rose Bowl tickets, with a face value of $150-$185, is 5 p.m. Thursday. Seats are going for upwards of $600 apiece on the secondary market, making it the hottest ticket of the college bowl season -- including the national semifinals.

UI director of ticket operations Pam Finke said that applicants will know Monday whether they got UI-allocated tickets for the Jan. 1 game between No. 6 Iowa and No. 5 Stanford in Pasadena, Calif.

"What we really want to do is help as many season ticket holders as we can," she told the Register on Wednesday.

That's going to be difficult, too. As of Wednesday, around 24,500 ticket requests had come in from season ticket holders, student season ticket holders, I-Club members and UI officials. There's time for that number to grow, too.

"It's a moving target," Finke said.

The 18,400 other applicants as of Wednesday -- alumni, non-season ticket holders -- will likely need to explore other options. However, Finke was hopeful that the Rose Bowl would provide additional tickets. She won't know if or how many until this weekend.

"I don't know how many more they would offer to us," she said. "The ideal situation, they would offer us enough ... to take care of all our season folks."

Until all orders are in, it's hard to say who gets tickets and who doesn't. But it will ultimately come down to math.

The UI athletics department uses a priority system that tallies points based on donation levels, duration of being a season ticket holder, alumni status and other criteria. Those at the highest level, Kinnick Gold and Kinnick Society, are limited to eight tickets. Basic season ticket holders or I-Club members are limited to two apiece. Finke was confident that requests of student season ticket holders, who have a limit of one apiece, would be filled.